Shortly after the publication of Leopold von Andrian's short novel Der Garten der Erkenntnis (The Garden of Knowledge, 1895), Hermann Bahr, the spokesman for a group of Austrian writers known since 1891 as "Young Vienna," proclaimed that no name in Europe was more famous than Andrian. Before the publication of the novel he had predicted: "Wenn von einem von den modernen Schriftstellern zwei Zeilen leben werden, so sinds welche vom Andrian" (If two lines of any of the modern writers should survive, then they will be lines by Andrian). Bahr's estimation, although exaggerated, was not altogether without merit. Today most critics would agree that, after Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, and Richard Beer-Hofmann, Andrian was one of the most talented of the Young Viennese writers. Furthermore, Andrian's lifelong preoccupation with Austrian culture as distinct from German culture, which culminated in his Österreich im Prisma der Idee: Ein Katechismus der...